News

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Nostalgia for the Light is playing March 23 - April 22 , 2016 in the United Kingdom.The Pearl ButtonAt 2015’s Berlin International Film Festival, The Pearl Button, the latest film by Patricio Guzmán, was awarded the Silver Bear prize for Best Script. No doubt deserving of this honor, one of the most high profile of the Chilean director’s near-five-decade career, the jury’s recognition of a documentarian for achievement in screenwriting may appear to some as strange, even misplaced. The oddity might help highlight that Guzmán has, in film, found striking new ways of revisiting and indeed rewriting historical subject matter.Chile’s Pinochet dictatorship—as contemporaneously chronicled in Guzmán’s exhaustive and episodic 1976 guerrilla film, The Battle of Chile—has remained the central subject of the director's work, though a topic approached and brought into close-up through an ever-abstracting...

They're funny and passionate. One of them can even rock a pastel pantsuit. Hadley Freeman hails her female heroes whose accomplishments deserve some serious respect

Betty White

These days, White is mainly known for two things: 1. Being old, and 2. Being funny about it. But there is so much more to her than geriatric self-mockery. Aside from her brilliant performances on The Golden Girls and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, White was one of the first women to take control of her own acting career by co-founding a TV production company in the 1950s. She was also nominated for the first best-actress Emmy in 1950, and her book about this period of her life, Here We Go Again: My Life in Television, is as funny as it is inspirational. Still sharp as a tack in her 10th decade, she is not only a hilarious actor but a hysterical off-the-cuff guest on American talk shows,...

"Les Miserables" Director Tom Hooper and composer Mychael Danna will be honored at the 24th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival. Hooper is set to get the Sonny Bono Visionary Award while Danna will receive the Frederick Loewe Award for Film Composing. Both will join previous announced honorees -- the cast of Argo, Richard Gere, Sally Field, Helen Hunt, Helen Mirren, Naomi Watts and Robert Zemeckis. The Festival runs January 3-14.

(Watch my fun interview with Tom Hooper for "Les Miserables" right here, "Les Miserables" movie review)

Here's the complete press release:

Palm Springs, CA (December 18, 2012) . The 24th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival (Psiff) will present Academy Award®-winning director Tom Hooper with the Sonny Bono Visionary Award and Mychael Danna with the Frederick Loewe Award for Film Composing. Presented by Cartier, the Awards Gala will be held Saturday, January 5, at the Palm Springs Convention Center. Hosted by Mary Hart,...

We’re shocked that Summit Entertainment and Stephenie Meyer have yet to announce some kind of detox program to help those of us who’ve spent up to seven years addicted to the Twilight books and movies. Aren’t they worried about the withdrawal we’ll all experience once we’ve seen Breaking Dawn – Part 2 a few times and have no more Edward and Bella to look forward to? Well, not to suggest that there is anything that can replace Forks and the Cullens in your heart, but we have a few new obsessions you might consider taking up. Which you choose all depends on why you became a Twi-crack addict in the first place. Read on and then suggest your own!

If you love Twilight because of …

… its star-crossed lovers plot, you’ll love:

Warm Bodies, the novel by Isaac Marion and upcoming Summit movie starring Nicholas Hoult. Zombie...

In the prudish days of Victorian England, a quarter of London’s female population suffered from hysteria — a misguided catch-all medical diagnosis of female malaise, melancholia, and anxiety. Suffering women of means found treatment from male medical specialists — quacks actually — who offered “pelvic massage.” Fortunately, there was a brilliant doctor willing to roll up his sleeves and get to the heart of the matter. In Hysteria, a romantic comedy that premiered Thursday night at the Toronto Film Festival, Hugh Dancy portrays Mortimer Granville, the buttoned-up but idealistic inventor of the vibrator. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays the progressive daughter of London’s...

He was the cocksure teen charmer in Skins, and stripped off for Colin Firth in A Single Man. But Nicholas Hoult isn't about to bare all for anybody

"I've been called Colin Firth and Hugh Grant's love child before," jokes Nicholas Hoult self-consciously. Their young co-star has certainly got their quintessentially British art of saying "um" and looking embarrassed down to a T. Studiously dressed down in mud-coloured hoodie, jeans and "don't look at me" trainers, the 21-year-old is still strikingly handsome, with his Vulcan eyebrows, alpine cheekbones and the sort of blue eyes you'd have thought possible only with extensive Photoshopping. Yet he's clearly anything but at home – either in his skin, or in the luxury of his Soho hotel suite. "My father was a pilot, and growing up we'd always get warnings about how expensive the minibar was: 'Don't touch the salted peanuts!'"

Talent-spotted at the...

Tom Hooper may not pick up the award for best director but Academy Awards matter less to such a high achiever, says Catherine Shoard

The odds are that Tom Hooper won't be named best director this Sunday. What that will make him, by default, is the year's most discreet. For although the cast, composer and writer of The King's Speech seem shoo-ins – and the film itself may well win best picture – Hooper himself looks likely to lose out.

An insult? Was he really the one thing that let the side down? No: it's a compliment. Hooper has helmed an awards-gorger of a movie, an underdog the size of a bus that's steamrollered the competition into submission, and no one really noticed there was a driver. A story in last week's Evening Standard said that "Peter Hooper" was irked by accusations of historical inaccuracy. This is the man behind the biggest Britflick in years.

This year's Oscar nominees include three British directors who cut their teeth in TV. So why are American directors still so wary of the small screen?

In the history of cinema, the word "television" has traditionally been used as an insult. Directors or actors who failed to make the expected impact in Hollywood would be whisperingly dismissed as box-fodder. And, in the UK, even though broadcasters such as the BBC and Channel 4 have been a major source of movie funding since the 1980s, it remains a damaging insult for a critic to say that a cinema release has a "made for television" look.

Such attitudes, though, are increasingly challenged by the Oscar nomination lists, and especially by the British talent involved. Strikingly, graduates of two of our leading TV soap operas – EastEnders and Casualty – are packing their tuxedos for the ceremony this Sunday. Although The King's Speech will dominate...

As a teenager Julian Fellowes felt awkward and boring. But when an aunt asked him to work in a summer camp in Colombia, he saw his chance not just to broaden his horizons but to become the man he wanted to be

I have always thought that, contrary to the presently fashionable blame culture, to a greater or lesser extent our lives are a product of our choices. And while it is usually hard to pin down the exact instant when we took this road or that one, it is not always so. Sometimes we can remember precisely when we altered direction and, in my life, a Damascene moment occurred when I was just beginning what we did not then call my gap year. I had left school in December 1966 and I was waiting to go up to Magdalene College, Cambridge, to study English literature.

My childhood was a happy one,...

Romola Garai has a had a brief but storied film career. She’s had a part in a suprising number of period dramas based on great literary works (see storied, get it?). Let’s see there’s: Daniel Deronda, Nicholas Nickleby, I Capture The Castle, Vanity Fair, As You Like It, Atonement, and Emma.

Read more on Romola Garai to play jilted lover in Lone Scherfig’s One Day…...

This is probably the most difficult Top 10 rankings I ever did - more difficult than the updated Top 10 for the actors. I have to find a balance wherein I give proper credit to certain actresses who have already established themselves and are already well-known by fans and ordinary moviegoers vis-a-vis those who have yet to boast of a growing list of followers, but has shown such unforgettable and powerful acting in some very impressive recently released films. At the end of the day, what really matters is that - at this moment - it was her name and her performances that moviegoers and critics alike are talking and raving about. - - -

# 10 - Isild Le Besco: France’s multi-award winning and multi-talented actress Isild le Besco is hot on the heels of Romola Garai in our Top 50 hottest young actresses at #10. Says film critic Marcy Dermansky:

- -...

This is probably the most difficult Top 10 rankings I ever did - more difficult than the updated Top 10 for the actors. I have to find a balance wherein I give proper credit to certain actresses who have already established themselves and are already well-known by fans and ordinary moviegoers vis-a-vis those who have yet to boast of a growing list of followers, but has shown such unforgettable and powerful acting in some very impressive recently released films. At the end of the day, what really matters is that - at this moment - it was her name and her performances that moviegoers and critics alike are talking and raving about. - - -

# 10 - Isild Le Besco: France’s multi-award winning and multi-talented actress Isild le Besco is hot on the heels of Romola Garai in our Top 50 hottest young actresses at #10. Says film critic Marcy Dermansky:

- -...

This is probably the most difficult Top 10 rankings I ever did - more difficult than the updated Top 10 for the actors. I have to find a balance wherein I give proper credit to certain actresses who have already established themselves and are already well-known by fans and ordinary moviegoers vis-a-vis those who have yet to boast of a growing list of followers, but has shown such unforgettable and powerful acting in some very impressive recently released films. At the end of the day, what really matters is that - at this moment - it was her name and her performances that moviegoers and critics alike are talking and raving about. - - -

# 10 - Isild Le Besco: France’s multi-award winning and multi-talented actress Isild le Besco is hot on the heels of Romola Garai in our Top 50 hottest young actresses at #10. Says film critic Marcy Dermansky:

- -...

If the website for the Maui Film Festival is any predictor of success for the 5-day cinematic affair, then 2009's installment will certainly satisfy expectation. An easily navigable Program eBook, Quick Looks Schedule and impressive trailer are all online, waiting to hype up excitement for the June 17-21 open air island-style fest.

A glance at the film and event guide reveals a potentially stimulating week full of indie film screenings, world premiers, music showcases. Thanks in part to premier sponsorship from the Starz movie network, the Mff has the opportunity to display a collection of films crossing a variety of topics, nationalities and emotions.

Highlights include several digital shorts showcases and the world premier of "Cash Crop", A Thursday night showing of "Adam" starring Hugh Dancy ("The Jane Austen Book Club", "King Arthur", "Daniel Deronda") and Rose Byrne ("Damages", "28 Weeks Later", "Troy") is also planned.

On June 18, actress Zooey Deschanel...